Ted Bell - Tsar

Yes, it was all quite clear now. He’d finally found him. The man MI-6 had long ago dubbed the Third Man, the unseen power behind the Kremlin throne.

It was never Ivan Korsakov, as Hawke had gradually come to believe.

It was General Nikolai Kuragin.

Palace intrigue was a noble tradition in ancient Russia, and Hawke had managed to get himself tangled up in this bloody intrigue without even knowing it. He’d come to Russia suffused with confidence, ready to practice his craft, to spy on them, only to learn that he was merely a tiny pawn on their great board. And the Third Man, the grandest chess master of them all, had been using him all along.

Using the pawn to take out the king?

Kuragin smiled, his eyes like black slits behind the thick lenses, and Hawke had the disconcerting sensation that the man had been reading his thoughts.

“It was you, wasn’t it, general? You had me arrested and thrown into Energetika Prison for a bloody job interview! ” Hawke said.

“Hmm. Let’s say I may have put the notion into the Tsar’s head. Of course, Korsakov had no idea you would live long enough to speak privately with our beloved former prime minister. No, Ivan the Terrible assumed you’d be impaled shortly after your arrival inside those forbidding black walls.”

“Ivan the Terrible,” Hawke said, smiling at the wily old spy. “Surprising you, of all people, would call him that. Your dear friend.”

“He’s a fucking monster,” Kuragin said with sudden ferocity.

“Impaling his enemies by the thousands is child’s play for him. Bringing about the total destruction of my beloved homeland by incurring America’s nuclear wrath is much more difficult. And yet that is precisely what he is about to do.”

“Unless you stop him.”

“Unless you stop him, Lord Hawke. I can never be seen as having anything to do with this, this…whatever you intend to do, for obvious reasons. I believe the current American expression is plausible deniability. I intend to have very plausible deniability, I assure you. Excruciatingly plausible.”

Hawke glanced at Halter, wondering how much he already knew of all this. Had Stefanovich Halter traveled all the way to Bermuda to take Hawke’s measure for Kuragin? It was surely possible they’d been planning a role for him even then. But Halter was giving nothing away. Men who’d spent their lives playing both sides of the scrimmage line were good at that kind of thing, else they paid in blood.

“I think perhaps we understand each other, general,” Hawke said, making his decision even as he said the words, raising his glass. Putin was far from perfect, but he was vastly preferable to the vainglorious psychopath who represented the status quo.

The pawn now saw the whole board as if from above and found he was more than willing to make the next move.

“To world peace,” Kuragin said, raising his own glass.

“To world peace,” the other two echoed, and then all three of them downed their drinks in a single draught.

“General,” Hawke said, glancing at his watch, “tell me more about your lovely bracelet and the object attached to it.”

“Certainly,” Kuragin said, pushing the detonator closer to Hawke. “What do you wish to know?”

“How does it work, for starters?” Hawke asked, picking it up and turning it over in his hands. He eyed the detonator carefully, contemplating the enormous power of it. It was simply a smaller version of the brain-shaped Zeta computer but without the brain-stem stalk to support it. Polished to a mirror finish. Quite heavy, with a hairline crack around the exterior, where it opened.

“The two extant detonators, called Beta machines, are connected by Bluetooth and other sophisticated wireless servers to every Zeta machine on the planet. I can easily program this Beta to blow up a single Zeta or, say, a hundred million of them. Individually or simultaneously. Only at the Tsar’s command, of course.”

“You actually can blow up the whole world with this thing,” Hawke said, eyeing Halter again. “Right here. Right now.”

“Basically, yes, I can, but I won’t. I am not insane. Not yet, anyway. The Tsar, on the other hand, would be perfectly happy to do so if someone on the other side either miscalculates or underestimates and gets in his way.”

“Amazing,” Hawke said, placing the Beta machine carefully on the table. He took the carafe from where it stood in front of Kuragin, poured himself a fresh drink, and looked at the two men with something akin to admiration.

Hawke said, “You don’t stockpile bombs or spend billions on reactors, delivery systems, nuclear subs, ICBMs. No, you distribute your bombs among your enemies! Better yet, you make a fortune by selling your enemies the seeds of their own destruction. Millions of them over a period of years. Such a simple, ingenious way to gather the fate of the world into one’s own hands.”

“Thank you,” General Kuragin said.

“This was your idea?” Hawke said, astonished. He’d naturally assumed the mad genius had been Ivan Korsakov.

“Yes, I’m to blame for this madness, I’m afraid. The military strategy of seeding the bombs, at any rate. Korsakov was the scientific genius behind designing and creating the actual Zeta machine. My grievous error was in letting my military strategy for Russian dominance fall into the wrong hands.”

“The Tsar’s.”

“Of course. I should have seen this coming. I did not. Now, I will pay for my mistake and correct it at a single stroke.”

“Still, the Zeta-network idea is brilliant in its simplicity,” Hawke said. “I’ll give you that much.”

“Simplicity is a cornerstone of genius. Tell me, Lord Hawke, have you ever heard anyone exclaim, ‘I love this idea. It’s so damn complicated!’”

Hawke smiled. Here he was, sharing a bottle with a man who’d hatched an evil scheme for world domination, and he found he rather liked him.

“General,” Halter said, “you were telling me earlier that each of the two Beta detonators also contains Hexagon explosives, correct? Like the explosives inside the Zeta computers.”

“Yes, but each Beta is packed with twice the explosive power. This one can explode the one in the Tsar’s possession, and vice versa.”

“Why?” Hawke asked.

“In case one or the other ever fell into the wrong hands, of course. The Tsar wanted to be able to eliminate that person instantly. He’s not comfortable sharing such power.”

“Except with you.”

Kuragin nodded his head, “Except with me, the only man on earth he trusts.”

Hawke ignored the implicit irony in this and said, “You’re saying you could use it now, to kill the Tsar?”

“I could. There is a code, known only to me. I enter it, arm this machine, press Detonate, and it will instantly explode the other Beta. If the Tsar is anywhere within, say, a radius of five hundred yards, he dies. But I never murder people, Lord Hawke. I have people murdered. It’s why I’m still alive.”

“The Tsar presumably has the Beta with him at all times?” Hawke asked.

“Of course. His nuclear football. Chained to the wrist of his bodyguard, named Kuba, a highly trained assassin who doubles as his driver. Kuba is never more than a few hundred yards away from his lord and master.”

Kuragin pulled a pack of cigarettes from his inside pocket, extracted one, and lit it with a paper match. The same brand Putin smoked, Hawke noticed, Sobranie Black Russians from the Ukraine.

Hawke pushed his chair back from the table and smiled at the general.

“General Kuragin, when was the last time you checked your account in Geneva?”

“I don’t really know. Some months ago, I suppose.”